How to Organize Volunteers when Helping a Sick Friend

I've found a great, FREE website called www.lotsahelpinghands.com which allows online organization of volunteers. I'm currently part of a friend's community as she fights breast cancer. This website is a wonderful tool and makes the entire process so much easier.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• A computer with an internet connection.
• An email address.

1. Step One: Click on the link entitled Pragmatic Compendium, found under "Resources" at the bottom of this page to read about a woman named “Grace” and how her friends used www.lotsahelpinghands.com to support her as she recovered from an injury. This story gives an overview of the services provided and the story about Grace gives a more personal understanding of how this website can help organize volunteers supporting someone in need. You can also copy the following link and paste it in the address line of your browser: http://pragmaticcompendium.wordpress.com/2008/03/06/lotsa-helping-hands/
2. Step Two: Go to www.lotsahelpinghands.com and create a community for a person in need. This person may be battling cancer, recovering from an accident or an illness, dealing with a chronic condition, or maybe even recovering from the birth of a new baby. If someone needs help, you can create a community for them. You can even create a community for yourself!
3. Step Three: Create “Activities” for the master calendar (a built in feature). You can select dates, times and enter a detailed descriptions. Enter in when meals are needed, dietary descriptions (and preferences). Add all kinds of activities: needed rides (to the doctor or for the kids), errands run, shopping trips (with lists) - if there is a need, put it on the calendar so members will be able to sign up for it. You can even assign a member to a particular activity.
4. Step Four: Add community members. All you need are their names and email addresses. It’s a good idea to tell them about the website and get their permission first. If they receive an unsolicited email from an organization they don’t recognize, some cautious people won’t even read the email, much less follow any directions contained in it.
5. Step Five: Designate some of the community members as coordinators. Coordinators can enter and modify activities, add members, send notifications, remove a member’s name from an activity if for some reason they can’t keep the commitment - or any other administrative task. The best case situation is to have two or more coordinators for each sub-group of people in the community. In the example about Grace (step one above), she had a number of coordinators.
6. Step Six: After adding the names and email addresses of potential members, any coordinator can send them a notification email (it’s a built in feature). The email instructs them to click on a link to confirm their email address, thus activating their membership in the community. Members can log in and modify their personal information, providing their address or phone number and any comment about themselves. updates about their progress. Members can log in anytime they want.
7. Step Seven: Active members can “sign-up” for activities. They can see which activities are “open” and who is signed up for them. They can enter “Well Wishes” and make “Announcements” (there’s a page for each). They can even read a secure blog where the person they are supporting can post updates about their progress.
8. Step Eight: Coordinators continue to create activities and members continue to sign up for them as long as help is needed.

Tips & Warnings

• And remember - it’s FREE!
• When sending emails from within LHH, you can be confident that the privacy of the individual members is maintained. However, if you send group emails from your own email address - outside of LHH, you may want to consider entering all the email addresses in the "bcc" address line instead of the "to" address line. By doing this, the email addresses of everyone in the group won't be shared.